Volume 1

Hello, everyone. I have returned once more with another somewhat obscure manga offering this week: Blade of the Immortal. Where my previous offering, Excel Saga, is a humorous, off-the-wall series, Blade of the Immortal is considerably different. If you are a fan of samurai stories, stylish violence, wit, bizarre characters, and deep story, then this might be for you. Read on to learn more.

Blade of the Immortal, known as Mugen no Junin in Japan (literally meaning Inhabitant of Infinity), comes to us from the imagination of Hiroaki Samura, a classically trained artist who turned his pen to manga in the mid nineties, following his dreams of becoming a mangaka (a writer and illustrator of manga). His style is unique amongst mangaka, being done in black and white pencil-sketch style, with a masterful eye on subtle details and elements of anatomy. His knowledge of how the human body moves and functions imparts a high degree of expression into his characters, which greatly aids in his often frenetic battle scenes, where many characters can be engaged in combat simultaneously. One of the most well-known features of his work in Blade is his “center-fold,” a highly detailed snapshot of a character, usually the main character Manji, in motion while fighting. These sketches take a great deal of time and are filled with details that most manga don’t bother with. This is not your average comic book artwork, though many of his frames are simplified in style due to necessity. The balance of simple and complex art is one of the reasons I adore Blade so much, but pretty pretty pictures are just a small part of it.

Dark Horse Comics, issue 126, featuring Rin.

The style and feel of Blade of the Immortal is unique as well, blending the historical background of 1780’s Japan with characters whose style and speech seem to come from the here and now. It might put some readers in mind of Samurai Champloo, but Blade is considerably deeper and more mature story-wise, but the anachronistic similarities are there. Fans of the series also look to see what ridiculous weapons the characters will be wielding next – things straight from Samura-san’s mind, with often impractical applications in real life, but that make for some really awesome fight scenes. However, without a good, compelling story loaded with engaging characters it is all for naught. Luckily, Blade of the Immortal is strong there, as well.

The central plot is this: A young girl, Rin, watches as her family and friends are slaughtered before her in her father’s dojo by a band of renegade kenshi (swordsmen) calling themselves the Itto-ryu, lead by Anotsu Kagehisa. Rin then embarks on a quest for revenge, but with little skill of her own, it would be suicide to go up against such skilled fighters, so she had to find someone to help her. Enter Manji, the series’ main protagonist. Manji was once a samurai, but was made a ronin and wanted man after he battled against a hundred other officers and slew them, including his own sister’s husband. He wandered bondless, hiding from the law until an encounter with the enigmatic Buddhist nun, Yaobikuni. She infected him with creatures known as kessen-chu, or blood worms, which will unnaturally prolong his life and instantly regenerate any wounds he suffers, and she challenges him to find meaning in a now nearly unending life. Nearly unkillable now, short of a rare poison that attacks the kessen-chu directly, Manji pledges to slay a thousand evil men – ten for each good man he killed – and so be freed of his burden. When Rin approaches him with her request to hire him as a bodyguard, Manji sees it as a possible way to come closer to his goal and accepts the job. In due time Manji finds himself fighting everyone from renegade swordsmen to corrupt shogunate lords, who crave the secrets of his nigh-immortality.

Rin, preparing for her mission into the "Badger Hole."

The plot, however, goes far beyond a simple revenge yarn, and as the story unfolds and the characters develop, the motivations that drove them (protagonist and antagonist alike) seem less important as time goes by. The series is now approaching its finale, starting with volume 22, Footsteps, beginning the Winter War arc that will complete the story, and I can tell you it’s a hard wait. One of the largest problems Blade of the Immortal has is an extremely slow print-run, with only one volume printed every year to year and a half. So even if only three to four volumes remain, it’s still plenty of time to get caught up. The series is published in English by Dark Horse Comics as a collected volume, though it was once published monthly as a normally-sized comic, but that run was discontinued due to low sales (since people like me usually waited for the whole, complete, volume instead). Prices per volume range from $14.95 to $19.95, quite a bit more than most manga, but the effort that goes into the manga helps explain that. It is printed in standard English comic format, rather than the more standard Japanese style right-to-left, by Samura-san’s request, no less. He wished to preserve the way the art flowed, and so rather than simply flip it to English style, each frame is cut and pasted before printing to assure accuracy.

"Blade of the Immortal," animated version, 2009.

Blade of the Immortal was recently turned into an anime, though I must say the anime cannot capture either the beauty of Hiroaki Samura’s art or the intricacies of his story, and largely falls flat. The manga, meanwhile, is widely regarded as a masterpiece, but still has a comparatively small following. According to Anime News Network, based on a weighted average, Blade of the Immortal ranks #230 of 2079 – not very low, and far higher on the scale than Excel Saga, which I featured a couple of weeks ago (#1826 of 2079), but still not enough people know how incredible this manga is. There is nothing out there quite like Blade of the Immortal, and If you want a mature, adult-oriented story with incredible, unique art and amazing action, try out Blade of the Immortal. You won’t regret it. Cheers, everyone, and happy reading!

A free issue of the Fantastic 4 in the Marvel app

So I waited three months to make sure if I really wanted it. I researched, I read, and I drooled. I made myself forget about it for awhile. But finally, my love of comic books overcame my hatred of Apple’s wankery and I bought an iPad, the cheapest version:  16GB WIFI.

And lord almighty, this machine is a comic lover’s dream. The form factor, battery-life, and touch interface are perfect for reading comic books. Before that, I was reading the occasional issue on my laptop or desktop to try out digital comics, but you can’t lie on your side in bed while reading on those devices. The desktop stays on the desk. The laptop heats up, makes fan and hard drive noises, and is really only feasible while lying on your back. Plus, I could never find an application that I liked – they were all slow or cumbersome, even on decent machines.

It’s a whole different game on the iPad.

There are a bunch of different apps to read comics on the iPad and they all have their strengths and flaws. Eventually I decided on Comic Zeal as the ideal reader, although I still have some problems with it. But I’ve been talking to the dev on Comic Zeal’s site, trying to give some feedback in hopes of making the app better. Other than that, the other apps aren’t bad. I like getting free comics from Marvel every few weeks through the Marvel app – that’s nice.

Before I bought it, I wasn’t sure if I’d like reading comics on the device of not – I made several trips to Best Buy and the Apple store to play with it to make sure. But the real test was a few days after I bought it, when I sat down to actually read some comics. At first it was a little strange, I couldn’t get past the interface and really get into the comics. The reading experience is different than a paper comic – you scroll the page and turn the pages, instead of moving your eyes to look down the page. It took me a few issues to get used to it, but then – WHAM! I looked up, four hours and thirty issues later and realized it was time to go to bed. Holy hell, it’s powerful awesome.

Now, I love reading all types of comics, but my true love is Spider-man, which I’ve been collecting since I was a kid. I have a full run of Web of Spider-man, Spider-man, Spectacular Spider-man, Amazing Spider-man (volume 2), Spider-man Unlimited, Sensational Spider-man (Vol 1 and 2), Marvel Knights Spider-man, Friendly Neighborhood Spider-man, and a bunch of mini-series and one-shots. I’m about 150 issues away (mostly the expensive early ones, unfortunately) from a full run of Amazing Spider-man (volume 1). I’m still waiting to find an old lady at a garage sale to fleece her out of Amazing Fantasy 15 (fingers crossed!). All told, my collection contains well over a thousand printed issues.

Too many comics

The collector in me wants to keep all those print issues forever, but the digital monk in me wants to get rid of them, as much is feasible, for the sake of digital issues. Physical issues take up space, have to be moved, sorted, and protected in plastic sleeves. They stain, get wet, get chewed up by animals and kids, and have to be handled with care. I treat my comics well, but there’s a decent amount of comic collecting that is just maintenance of their physicality. Not to mention that reading physical comics in bed annoys my girlfriend – unwrapping the plastic, reading the book, rewrapping it in plastic, shifting the mattress to reach down to the long box by our bed to get the next issue – she’s a trooper, but she still complains from time to time. All that noise and movement isn’t necessary when reading comics on the iPad. So I’d like to completely transition to digital.

Of course, most of the comics I have are only available digitally through piracy, which isn’t an option for me.  I really like Spider-man and want to pay to ensure its continued production. The Amazing Spider-man, however, especially the expensive early issues I’m missing, is available on a DVD from Marvel. So I picked it up, as an experiment. I want to see if selling my print comics is really feasible or not. I want to know how I feel about only having the issues digitally. I’m still very attached to them (I’ve had some issues since I was eight years old), but sentimentality alone is no reason to keep stuff around.

So that’s why I bought an iPad. There are tons of problems with the machine – no Flash (already bothering me – hell, even the WordPress Stats add-on uses Flash to display graphs), lack of file management (data is stored inside Apps instead of separate files), crappy file syncing, no USB ports, and all that Apple App store wankery.

But for reading comics?

Pure unadulterated awesome.

First, to introduce the main characters.

IB

(short for Inappropriate Bear, aka Spider Bear, aka Cubicle Bear)

IB, the office drunk, has magnets sewn into his paws and middle allowing him to stick to walls. This also has the unfortunate side effect of making him stick to himself. IB was once a loner, but he now participates in an active office lifestyle. He is a tenacious wall climber by day and a party animal by night.

Spacebear

Although Spacebear cannot climbs wall he does possess an anti-gravity mechanism that allows him to hover over an cubicle barrier. IB and Spacebear are enemies about 40% of the time.

*I’m hoping to recast Spacebear as it has been pointed out to me that Spacebear is actually an underwater female squirrel from some popular cartoon show.

Dino

Dino is a gentle mannered, thoughtful dinosaur joining the office crew straight out of prehistory.

I’m going to try to summarize what’s been going on in one rambling sentence. You can read all the past episodes in the cubicle bear archives. There is a numbered episode list to guide you through the story.

IB and Spacebear, once the greatest of enemies fighting to the death, inadvertently fell back in time to a mysterious lost island where they met a friendly dinosaur named Dino who scared them into setting off another time bomb sending all three of them back to the land of cubicles where they eventually befriended the dinosaur and set plans to get him back to his home by gathering the ingredients for making a time machine (as they were all out of time bombs) and after stumbling through many difficulties in gathering these objects they are now set and ready to send Dino back into prehistory.

1st Cubicle Episode on Mispeled